Conceptualizing Alternative Theater and Alternative Performance Space in Postindependence Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article proposes conceptual working definitions for alternative theater and alternative spatiality as they apply to postindependence Zimbabwean theater practice. These conceptual definition proposals identify and delineate the contemporary Zimbabwean spatial appreciation of alternative performance space and esthetic practice. In this article, I implicate alternative performance esthetics and spatiality in how the past, as the people’s cultural frame of reference, can remain compatible with the demands of the present, and possibly the future. As a popular strategy, alternative theater performance spaces are presented as ways of reworking the colonial mapping process leading to the development of a new map, that is, a visible site of deconstructive attack. This remapping process presents a new spatial and esthetic knowledge situated within hybrid/ syncretic alternative performance space.